I doubled back and went into HMV—not that I would lose them in here, since you have to exit the same way you come in, but now they had to figure out how to regroup their coverage. On the escalator I had all of three seconds to decide where to go, and I briskly made my way upstairs to the movie DVDs. Damn it. What now? I couldn’t afford to confront whoever this was, not with the cops breaking through my flat door, and me as a murder suspect. I had to find a sanctuary where I could stop and assess and figure out a way to clear my—
“Teresa!’
Todd. Action Man from the porn shoot, the one we did with Charlene. In a polo shirt and jeans again, dark jacket, every strand of black hair neatly brushed in place. Smiling at me in delightful surprise, carrying a couple of Jason Statham movies on sale.
“How are you?’
“I’m…I’m fine, Todd. Hey, still fancy that drink?’
“Uh, yeah, sure. When?’
“How about now?’ I asked, giving him my best come-hither smile. “As a matter of fact, why don’t we forget the drink altogether?’
“What did you have in mind?’
I know, I know. I shouldn’t have used him like that. He’d spotted me, and all kinds of thoughts rushed through my head. Yes, I could walk right out with him, but whoever followed might make trouble for Todd after we parted, the same way my other friends were getting harassed. And Todd was the kind of bloke who would be curious enough to catch up if I just rudely cut him dead or made a sudden goodbye.
My tails hadn’t come up the escalator yet, so I pulled on Todd’s arm, and we made our way towards the rear of the shop floor. There are no public restrooms in HMV, of course, but there had to be a stockroom or something. There was. And thank God, it was empty for the moment.
I pushed him inside and behind some shelves, and I didn’t even give a damn if one of the store staff found us. Maybe the best thing in the world would be if security led us out. My tails wouldn’t interfere with him then, not with a big scene on the street. If I were really lucky, they’d be baffled, wondering where I had disappeared to and run back out of the store and down Oxford Street.
Todd was laughing, almost gasping for breath at my brazenness. I yanked his shirt out of his trousers and undid his belt, quickly getting myself half undressed as well. “I want you to fuck me hard right here, right now,‘ I said.
We kissed in an animal fever, and he wasn’t that great a kisser, too slobbery, too aggressive with his tongue, but when his trousers unzipped, I was presented with eleven inches of engorged pink penis. God, he’d split me. He was a talker as well, whispering useless inanities like, “You want me to fuck you? You want me to fuck you?’ Me gasping enthusiastic yeses.
But in spite of all this, I felt myself getting aroused by the threat of discovery, by the danger that the tails might change their minds and move in. Hunted, scared, and God, just give me quick pleasure if I can’t get myself out of this jam. So help me, I wanted him to make me come. Definitely had the build for arm candy, prime porn beef. Strong arms lifted me, and then I was impaled, my hands reaching up to grip a metal shelf rail and help him with my weight. Oh, shit, he was enormous inside me.
Chanting now as he jackhammered inside me, “You want me to fuck you now? You want me to …’ I tuned him out and concentrated on the shadows of abs under his pushed-up shirt, the muscles of his thighs, and his thick cock as it slid out of my pussy, disappearing again within me. No caressing arms and no tender kisses, just organs fused together, body hunger. I saw beads of perspiration on his forehead. He was a construction worker, hard at his labors, willing me to come as if his professional pride depended on it. Keep drilling, baby.
I thought of faking it for him, but I never do that, not fair to me or any guy involved, and something clicked between the vision of his half-revealed chest, the sight of his hips, and the view of his cock ramming into me. Genuine pleasure took over, and I let go of the rail, arms flinging themselves around his neck. He was deep inside me, arm around my waist and hand cupping my ass to support my weight. I sensed he was ready to burst, about to come inside me.
“What the bloody hell you think you’re doing?’
Yes. I did move fast. And you never saw a penis lose its erection so quickly.
I started apologizing, looking embarrassed (and it wasn’t hard, trust me), and poor Todd—maybe because he didn’t get his orgasm—did the exact opposite of what he should have done. He actually got offended that we were interrupted. “Hey! There’s no need for that!’
“Todd,’ I said gently. “We’re the ones who aren’t supposed to be here.’
“Got that right,’ said the angry clerk. “I’m calling security, you degenerate—’
“That’s no way to talk to us!’ Todd barked back. And in all this commotion, I pulled on Todd’s arm, telling him let’s go, and the clerk must have already rung for security, because as we walked out of the stockroom a guy in uniform stepped towards us. What seems to be the problem here, sir, the clerk getting more agitated, and Todd no longer even paid attention to me. I made a little wave and a timid goodbye, and ducked behind a display stand as the surveillance operatives were distracted.
If I get through this, I’ll do something for him, I told myself . I won’t make it up to him with my body, but Helena knows actors and directors. Maybe she could get him a bit part on EastEnders or something.
As I darted away and made for the escalator, I looked back and saw he was still at it. I hoped he would give up in a second. I didn’t want to see him get banned from the shop.
Not my finest hour.
♦
Out on Oxford Street again. They had lost me for a moment, but they weren’t stupid.
Now if you’re in my situation, possibly being followed by one of the most experienced and sophisticated espionage organizations in the world (and believe me, it is not flattering), at this moment you need to worry about your cell phone. After all, each and every one of us carrying one is walking around with a transmitter that shouts HERE I AM and offers your GPS coordinates.
Don’t kid yourself. Just because you turn it off doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t still be found. Credit where credit is due: I picked up this little gem from a novel by a real former American spy, Robert Baer. Sometimes I read what my friends recommend, and Jiro had liked this one— but then he loves techie stuff.
“Of course, you can be found,’ Jiro explained to me one day. “If you know what you’re doing, you can hide a capacitor in somebody’s cell phone.’ And for those of us who don’t do DIY and fool around with the wiring in the house, a capacitor is an energy storing device—keeps energy in the electrical field between two conductive plates. “So yeah, if you’ve still got power—and with the capacitor, you do— you can send a signal.’
It’s the kind of sneaky trick Hodd’s boys would have pulled, and perhaps I should have thought of it an hour ago, but even if I managed to take my own mobile apart and remove the right thingy (probably with Jiro on a land-line guiding me, but hey, good luck finding a handy public phone on the street these days), they would just put in a fresh one when they had the chance. Ugh.
As I fled HMV, I pulled out my SIM card and tossed the phone in a rubbish bin.
Along Gower Street is a row of cheap one-star hotels where they take cash. I always carry my passport, and I took a chance that the police hadn’t changed their minds and released my name. I didn’t have much choice. I had been running around since I’d left Helena’s that morning, and I was sick of the October rain, exhausted, and cold.
For fifty pounds a night you get a room with a bed and a television bolted to a shelf, one that has no satellite and fuzzy channels, and your toilet and stand-up shower are communal ones down the hall. The wallpaper is hideous and the curtains are depressing, and even more ominous is the free English breakfast in the morning that promises flaccid bacon strips and runny eggs. The place is Spartan but clean, and you’re not expected to spend hours in the gloom wondering what happened to your life.
But I did.
I risked going outside later to get something to eat. Pub food—Thai. I ate alone, and still I couldn’t escape my own mind. I tried to think of mistakes I had made to bring this on myself. I gave myself grief over the fact that I had chosen this weird part-time career, and how I used to congratulate myself for getting into trouble and escaping unscathed. Until now. I started to cry as I finished my meal.
Some fool whispered to his mate at the next table, “Food’s not that bad.’
His friend gave him a sour look of disapproval, and then he asked me if I was all right. Yes, I was fine. I had to be fine and not draw attention to myself. Then I walked back to my hotel, careful to be sure the surveillance hadn’t returned. I went numb, watching a movie on Channel Four, unable to summon any answers. Tomorrow, I told myself, wiping my eyes. Tomorrow I’ll get my life back.
5
I didn’t. But I learned things that would help that evening. I waited until nightfall to slip across town, back towards Richmond—no, not back towards Helena. I headed for Twickenham. I had to pay someone else a visit, and this time it was better I break my way in than knock on the front door.
Helê was in a half-T and Levi’s, watching TV, as I appeared in the doorway of the living room. Her eyes looked bloodshot, the effects of sleeplessness and crying, her expression vacant, numb. I knew what grief looked like and what it felt like. Hers was genuine. She wasn’t involved in what had happened.
“Helê.’
She instantly jumped and shrank with fear in a corner of the sofa. “You! What are you doing here? The police came. They say you killed Luis! You lost your mind and killed him in a rage!’
“I didn’t.’ As I stepped in, she shrank a little more, not believing me at all.
“Helê, they’re saying I beat him to death, and that I’m an Islamic terrorist. Do I look like I could beat anyone to death?’
“They say you’re not Teresa Lane. Your name is Teresa Knight, and you’re a martial arts expert.’
“There’s no such thing,’ I said absently. “But my real name is Teresa Knight.’
Martial arts expert. Whoever had spoken to her, whether police or Hodd’s people, had laid it on thick.
“I have a few skills, that’s all, Helê. And I’ve never killed anyone in my life. And why would an Islamic terrorist kill a Portuguese porn producer?’
She didn’t answer that one, and I saw she’d already been wondering. But most people wouldn’t accept anything a fugitive told them; they’d just dial the police.
“I did lie to you and Luis, Helê—but only about my last name and what I was doing at the studio. I was hired to investigate Silky Pictures.’
“By who?’ she asked, still bewildered.
“I’ll get to that, it’s a long story…You know something, don’t you?’ I knew I’d better tread soft.
“May…Maybe …’
“Maybe what?’
“The documentary,’ she whispered.
“The documentary,’ I said, nodding. “But Luis wasn’t even working on that. He was here, and it was being produced in Brazil.’
She nodded with a wet sniff, grabbing tissues from a box on the coffee table. “He was disgusted they should launch this division without him being involved.’
“I know. But why would anyone kill him over that?’
“I … I don’t know. But… But he told me the documentary was supposed to be about Islam in Brazil.’
No wonder she was afraid of me. All she had was her murdered husband’s indignation over a documentary on Muslims, and then a crazy chick turns up who the police say is a Muslim extremist, the one who killed him. Barely a connection; jagged pieces that didn’t fit but also didn’t feel like they had shattered and fallen out of coincidence.
I couldn’t fathom it. Why would a porn studio make a documentary on Muslims in Brazil?
“Luis had an old friend who works as an editor at Silky Pictures back home,’ said Helê. “The main headquarters in Rio. Luis asked him to send footage of the documentary.’
“You have it?’ I asked, amazed. I nearly blurted out that I had checked Luis’s computer at work and found nothing, but I doubt she would have taken that well.
“It was sent to his machine at home. He suspected there were spies for the Rio headquarters at the London office.’
Maybe he was already suspicious of Duncan by then.
“Can I see it, please?’
“I don’t know what you will learn from it, but okay.’
She turned on the computer and, after a couple of minutes of looking for the file, she opened Windows Media Player, and I watched. She was right. There was not much I did learn. It looked like any raw footage for a documentary, with establishing shots of mosques and ambient sound of nearby streets, rough cuts of interviews with imams, sometimes in Portuguese, sometimes in Arabic. When I asked Helê if the imams said anything significant, she shrugged. “They talk about Islam, the Qur’an … One talks about coming to Brazil from Lebanon. There’s nothing here, Teresa.’
I couldn’t do a proper assessment. I didn’t know Portuguese or Arabic, and I certainly didn’t know if I was looking at anything significant. The camera work was quite thorough in capturing beautiful shots of the mosques, some as banal in appearance as any modern, boxy Christian church, but several had traditional architecture. The cameraman made a point of panning from a dome or minaret to the contrast of a Brazilian landscape, making a visual statement on how the country was changing. After fifteen minutes, I was ready to chase another angle.
“Helê. Luis had an argument with two men who came to the office. I don’t know what it was about because they spoke in Portuguese. One had his hair dyed blond and a stubble beard. I had a rather ugly run-in with him at the studio the night that Luis was murdered.’
She looked at me warily, not sure if she should explain.
“Helê, please.’
“That sounds like Henrique Marinho. Oh, God…This is Marinho. Was this him?’
She quickly brought up the Portuguese home page for Silky Pictures in Rio. And there under the “About’ link, with all the usual entries for corporate bios, was a photo and brief blurb about Silky’s managing director. Georgie. That bleached blond sadist was Henrique Marinho. Well, I’ll be damned. Something very big must be going on to prompt the head of the sleaze to fly over himself.
“Two days ago,’ Helê told me, “Luis was very upset—I could see it. But all he said was that he had to stop the Rio operation from going ahead.’
“With this documentary project?’
She let her head fall into her hands, close to exhaustion from grief. “I’m not sure. When I challenged him, he would not tell me more details. He said it is safer that I don’t know. Then he talked about us going away on holiday, and I could tell he was afraid for us.’
He’d learned something recently, something damaging. He had a piece of it. Or he had figured out Marinho’s entire scheme.
Damn. The trouble with people thinking you’re safer not knowing is that when there’s genuine danger, they can wind up killed and you’re left in total ignorance. My mind raced, wondering if maybe there was nothing to the documentary after all except Luis’s professional envy. Perhaps this was about something else. I had another lead to try.
“Listen to me, Helê. Luis had a picture of a girl on his computer at work, and I think she may be important.’ I fished the printout of the jpeg out of my handbag. “This girl.’
Her eyes glistened with fresh tears. “I know her. I think…’ She sniffed wetly, reached for another tissue. “Maybe Luis is dead because of me.’
“I don’t understand.’
Helê passed me back the photo. “The girl’s name is Matilde. I recognized her from back home.’ She scooped up the remote and switched off the television. “I grew up in Rocinha. I suppose you do not know where that is.’
“A town in Brazil?’ I asked politely.
“It’s a rubbish bin,’ she scoffed, laughing
with no humor as she wiped her eyes. “It’s a favela in the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro.’
The only thing I knew about favelas was from my brother, Isaac, who had visited Brazil. He told me they were shantytowns.
“Rocinha is a better favela than many of them,’ Helê went on. “It’s been promoted to a slum. We have banks, TV, drugstores—but believe me, it’s still a favela. Matilde and I used to play as children near the same piles of trash. Then at thirteen, I was scouted one day for modeling. My ‘audition’ was to be raped behind a mechanic’s shed.’
My God.
“Three years later,’ she went on, “I met Luis when he came to Brazil. He was still building his career, making his first feature for Henrique Marinho at Silky Pictures, and he expected girls to be willing participants just as they are here. It took him a while to wake up and realize that Marinho not only makes porn, he runs prostitutes, he’s a gangster…Luis saw how young I was, and he rescued me. He refused to film girls in debt slavery and only worked with ‘professional’ actresses, not the prostitutes Marinho collected. Out of his own pocket he paid me to be his assistant instead of lying on my back.’
I sat down opposite her on the sofa. She looked at me as if I were an alien, a visitor beyond her whole scope of reference. Our lovemaking with her husband seemed an unreliable memory now. She needed the older, more cherished memories with Luis to keep herself from breaking apart.
“There are those who think Luis is… was… some kind of pervert. A Daddy figure taking me out of the game, saving me for himself.’
“I don’t think that at all,’ I put in. “Maybe your relationship started with him more as a…mentor for you. You initiated things sexually, didn’t you?’
She nodded. “I loved him. And he married me. He took me from all the ugliness. I teased him about how he tore me away from the sun, how little sunshine this place gets, but it is no lie, he made me so happy here. There are stupid girls who sometimes try to seduce him, but they know nothing about real love, real commitment. It is probably why we both found you so exciting. You weren’t one of these silly girls who thought he could be a stepping stone in their career. You understand sensuality.’
Sexile Page 12